1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of data handling and, more particularly, providing enhanced user control for outgoing data handling for a mobile device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile devices are an important component of an ever-expanding communication network. A variety of mobile devices keeps families abreast of each others' whereabouts and business people current with essential information. Technological advances continue to produce mobile devices with more power and the ability to perform a wider spectrum of functions. Additionally, mobile devices provide a convenience in size, availability, and quality.
As a result of the proliferation of mobile devices into the business world, the manner in which mobile devices exchange data is of critical importance. Delays in sending or receiving data can have a detrimental impact on how and when a mobile device user performs business. Advances have been made in an attempt to overcome issues with data handling. However, many of these advances have been implemented in hardware and network protocols.
Although helpful, advances of this nature do not afford any control of data handling to the device user. For example, a device that automatically adjusts the data transmission speed due to a hardware component does so without any user interaction or control. Therefore, the device user cannot control when the device changes transmission speed and cannot override the component.
Further, these manners often do not compensate for dynamic changes in multiple network or environmental factors. For example, changes made to device data handling based on the device's current connectivity speed may do so without regard to the device power level or type of data being transmitted. Such factors are often of importance to a device user and can be critical to how or when a user would desire to transmit data.
Many existing user controls are simple, much like a light switch—either on or off. Data is either always transmitted or the transmission must be manually initiated by the user. Such controls are burdensome for users and lack a granularity of control that would allow a user to customize how and when data should be sent from the device. Other existing schemes for controlling outgoing date are extremely complex and require information pertaining to a computing space external to the mobile device and/or can require computing operations be performed by components external to the mobile device. Acquiring external information or relying upon external computing operations can be overly complex to implement and can needlessly consume the very resources, such as battery life and bandwidth, that a user is attempting to conserve or regulate by manipulating the user controls.